It's no secret that Trent Reznor is awesome. He's brought industrial music to the forefront and given the dark side of ourselves a kickass soundtrack. Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, With Teeth, Year Zero, Ghosts I-IV, and now, we have The Slip, the newest, and might I add, free album.

That's right, this one's on Trent:

That's the word from the website. How fucking cool is that? A whole goddamn new album, free to download. All the major music outlets are buzzing with the news. And rightfully so. Not only is NIN one of the biggest musical acts ever (side note: they turn 20 next year), but ever since leaving Interscope, his former label, Trent has gone through a sort of Renaissance in terms of musical output. Back in March, he dropped Ghosts on us, an incredible instrumental album that, when released online, crashed the servers due to the immense traffic it generated. I shuffled into work the next morning a zombie because I stayed up all night waiting on my download. And just a couple weeks ago, we were treated to a free download of the single "Discipline" and a cryptic message that said "Two weeks." Naturally, fans were up in arms about this. Two weeks till what? More tour dates? Another album? God help me, the suspense is unbearable!!! And so, at midnight PDT May 5th (actually, just a little after, I noticed), Trent gave us "The Slip," an inspired and very danceable effort.

From the site:

This one, like 'Ghosts' before it, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike agreement, and of course, you can remix it if you so choose. Hell, after you download it, you'll get a page where you can email three of your friends a download link. Spread it all around, share it with everyone. Get a listen here. And how much money does TR stand to make? We won't know till the physical sales numbers are released. All I can say is that he must be very confident in making up that money in other ways. He made over a million dollars easy in the week after 'Ghosts' was released, just through online sales.

Here's the tracklisting:

Yeah, it's short, but it's great. I'll leave the discussion of its merits in SG's very own NIN group (join if you haven't). What I'm excited for are the setlists for the upcoming tour. With all this new music, are the shows gonna be 3 hours long? Not that it would bother me, but it may prove a logistical nightmare for the band and crew. Speaking of touring, go register with nin.com if you'd like to get presale tix. It's a new system they're using, and here's their logic:

Once again, check the performance page for the show dates/times/locations and presale info.

While I, like others, lament the decline of traditional record stores and the physical media they provide (there's just something about actually holding an album), I do embrace the new path that NIN and others (i.e. Radiohead) are blazing with digital downloads, and the subsequent closer, more direct relationship with fans that normally would be blocked by the record labels. The times change and we must change with them. For some opinions on this brave new world we are entering, check out David Byrne and Thom Yorke in Wired Magazine.